File Spider Virus Ransomware Removal (+.Spider File Recovery)

Ransomware is a type of PC virus that can lock the files on your computer or block the access to the whole PC allowing the hacker who’s controlling it to blackmail you for a ransom payment if you wish to restore the access to your data or your computer. Recently, a new version of Ransomware was released under the name of Spider and a lot of unfortunate users have already gotten their systems infected by this nasty malware piece. We have decided to write this article in order to inform our readers about the most important characteristics of File Spider and the Ransomware category as a whole. We have also added a removal guide for this virus which might aid you in eliminating it. If your machine is currently infected by the noxious program, you might want to visit our guide and follow its instructions to hopefully remove the virus from your system.

File Spider Virus Ransomware

Encryption

File Spider is a type of Ransomware virus that is known as cryptovirus – this means that this particular Ransomware would target the personal files that have been saved on its victim’s PC and use a sophisticated encryption code to lock them and render them inaccessible. There are a couple of important details that you must know about Ransomware encryption.

First and foremost, the process of encryption locks your files but it does not harm them. Because of this, many otherwise reliable antivirus tools would not be able to detect the virus since the encryption process wouldn’t raise any red flags due to lack of any actual harmful behavior. In fact, encryption processes are a commonly used way of protecting important data. However, when exploited by a Ransomware, this otherwise useful process gets turned against the user of the PC.

Another thing that you need to be aware of regarding the encryption is that it would remain on your files even if Spider gets removed from your computer. This means that it wouldn’t be enough to simply eliminate the virus in order to regain access to your sealed data documents. Additional action would need to be taken towards unlocking the files. However, note that it is still essential that the virus gets removed first so as to prevent it from encrypting any documents that you might get unlocked.

Detecting File Spider Virus

Ransomware infections are notorious for their high level of stealthiness. Apart from being able to stay below the radar of many antivirus programs while encrypting the user’s’ data files, those viruses also tend to show little to no infection symptoms. This makes it that more difficult to spot and intercept a Ransomware before it has gotten too late. Regardless, know that there still are certain potential red flags that you must be on the lookout for if you suspect a Ransomware infection.

One typical sign of a Ransomware is increased consumption of system resources. RAM and CPU spikes as well as PC slow-down can sometimes be caused by a Ransomware’s encryption process. Those symptoms can be especially evident on weaker PC’s that do not have a lot of memory or a powerful processor. Another possible indicator of the infection could be a decrease in the free HDD space that your PC should have as the encryption process temporarily requires some amount of hard-disk memory.

If any of the above mentioned symptoms is present on your PC, make sure to quickly turn off the machine and contact an experienced IT professional for further aid.

What about the ransom?

If the virus has already managed to lock-up your files, you are likely faced with a difficult choice: pay the demanded money and hope that this will be the end of it or seek an alternative solution. Normally, we will advise our readers to go for the second option since there is no guarantee that your data would get restored even if you execute the money transfer. There’s no shortage of examples of users who have made the payment yet were still left with inaccessible files. On the other hand, you can use our removal guide to try to handle this Ransomware problem but we cannot promise you that it will be 100% successful for everyone. However, in the end it is up to the individual to decide what to do so choose the option that you think would be the best for you.

Future security

Regardless of the outcome of your current problem with Spider, you will need to ensure that no such Ransomware infection takes place on your PC in future. To do that, remember to always be careful when going on the Internet from now on. Ransomware viruses tend to get distributed through illegal sites, malvertisement and spam e-mails/social network messages. Be sure to avoid all of those so as to ensure that your system stays as protected as possible.

Also, know that it is still important to have a reliable antivirus because it can help you detect and stop backdoor malware such as Trojan Horses – another very popular method that is used for Ransomware distribution.

Lastly, do not disregard the importance of having your important files backed up on a separate device or on a cloud service – this is probably one of the best ways to counteract any potential infections by Ransomware!

File Spider Virus Ransomware Removal

Prior to starting to execute the steps from the guide, we advise you to either bookmark this page or open it on a separate device since throughout the process of completing the guide, you might need to exit your browser.

1: Using Safe Mode

Before beginning to troubleshoot the issue, you are advised to enter Safe Mode on your PC. If you do not know how to do that, use this guide on how to enter Safe Mode.

2: Spotting the process

Open your Task Manager using the Ctrl + Shift + Esc key combination. Next, go to the processes tab and carefully look through the list for any shady entries. Usually, malicious processes will be consuming large amounts of CPU and RAM and will either have no description or will have a suspicious-looking one.

Once you identify the virus’ process, right-click on it and select Open File Location. Delete everything in the folder that opens if you are sure that the process was malicious. If you are not sure, contact us in the comments.

Go back to the Task Manager and end the potentially harmful process.

3: Hosts file IP’s

Go to your start menu and in the search field, paste the following address: notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts. Select the first result and look at the bottom of the newly opened notepad file. See if there are any IP’s below “Localhost” and tell us in the comments if there were any IP addresses.

4: System Configuration Startup Programs

Type System Configuration in the Windows search bar and open the first result. Go to the Startup tab and take a look at the list of startup programs (on Windows 10, the Startup programs can be seen in the Startup Section of the Task Manager). If any of them look shady or have unknown manufacturer or a manufacturer with a sketchy name, uncheck those entries and click on OK.

5: Registry

Open the Run window (WinKey + R), type regedit and press Enter. Once the Registry Editor opens, press Ctrl + F and type the name of the virus. Select Find Next and delete whatever gets found that has the virus’ name. Do that with all search results.

6: Deleting potential virus files

Open the Start Menu and separately type each of the following locations: %AppData% %LocalAppData% %ProgramData% %WinDir% %Temp% . Open each of those folders and sort their contents by date. Delete the most recent files and folders. When you open the Temp folder, delete everything in it.

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Boris' main task on TinySoftware is to keep an eye out for the latest cyber threats, software news and technology trends and then turn those into articles for this site. In his articles, he seeks to present the collected information in a way that would be easy to understand by the regular user allowing everyone to learn more about the each of the topics that he covers on TinySoftware.